The Productive Pedagogy of Ambiguity in Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons
The Productive Pedagogy of Ambiguity in Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons
This chapter offers an example of how to productively teach Lynda Barry’s graphic narrative One Hundred Demons through the lens of ambiguity, which runs throughout Barry’s coming-of-age comix. Ambiguity of her intended audience (adults vs young adults), of the genre (autobiography, fiction, novel, art), and most especially of her ethnic and racial identity (white appearing with a Filipino extended family) saturate One Hundred Demons, in the collision of text, image, and color. The fluidity of ambiguity threaded in Barry’s comix allows students to enter and engage with the graphic narrative and to see the universal elements through the specificity of her story. The unique power of Barry’s graphic narrative lies in how well she is able to convey liminality: through pictures and words, Barry captures the heartbreakingly painful awkwardness of transitioning from childhood into adolescence and of being an other and an outsider, sometimes within her own family.
Keywords: Lynda Barry, One Hundred Demons, Filipino, Comix, Graphic fiction
University Press of Mississippi requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
